On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the
opening of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), many questions
remain open, many issues unresolved. Pope Benedict himself, as
an “eyewitness” of the Council, spoke in early October about his
feeling of great joy he felt in 1962 at the prospect of a new
flowering of Christian faith and life when the Council began,
and of how that feeling, over time, changed into a more nuanced,
realistic one as it became clear that some of those early hopes
were too optimistic or premature. Benedict made these remarks at
a general audience, and in a touching evening discourse from his
apartment window, on October 11.

To gain a better understanding of the Pope’s
mind, we sat down recently with German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig
Müller, Joseph Ratzinger’s successor at the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, for an extended conversation.

Müller knows Benedict well. The Pope chose
Müller to be the editor of the collected edition of all his
writings, his Opera Omnia. The 7th volume of this massive
undertaking contains Ratzinger’s writing on the Second Vatican
Council (“The Theology of the Council: Texts on the Second
Vatican Council” (Theologie des Konzils Texte über das II.
Vatikanische Konzil).

Müller is a courageous, creative German
theologian. His episcopal motto “Dominus Iesus” (“The Lord Jesus”
but also “Jesus Is Lord”) has a profound theological meaning, he
told me. “The expression ‘Dominus Iesus,’ ‘Jesous kyrios
estin,’ is the oldest declaration of faith in the News
Testament,” he began. “In the writings of St. Paul it often
occurs. Jesus is the Lord. The apostle connects the earthly
Jesus, his earthly way as a human being, with the ‘Lord.’ Lord
is here another word for God, for Jesus is God. It is a
confession of the divinity of Christ. Jesus is the real son of
God who has taken on our human nature. I was for 16 years a
professor of theology. In the lectures on Christology, this
confession is the basis, but also the source, from which
everything comes and the central point to which everything leads
and is bound together. ‘Jesus is the Lord’: this confession
constitutes Christian identity. From that I have taken my motto
and; from that the document Dominus Iesus has its name.”
Then he added: “Also the 95 theses of Martin Luther begin with
Dominus Jesus, a fact I like to refer to quite often.”

And so our conversation began...

Your Excellency, 50 years after the Second
Vatican Council only a few people recall that Pope Benedict
himself took part in it. What was his contribution?

ARCHBISHOP GERHARD L. MÜLLER: Joseph Ratz inger
became a professor at a very young age. As he was teaching in
Bonn (near Cologne) the then-cardinal of Cologne, Josef Frings,
took him to the Second Vatican Council as an expert. There the
young theologian Joseph Ratzinger prepared many speeches for
Cardinal Frings, who was a moderator of the Council, and he gave
theological lectures on important themes to the German-speaking
bishops.

In this way, a considerable amount of his
thought made its way into the texts of the Council, especially
with regard to the understanding of revelation.

The revelation of God is not only the sum of
individual truths, but God reveals himself in his son Jesus
Christ, in his Holy Spirit, and therefore God is for us human
beings truth and life. We, as mortal beings, as creatures, want
to perceive the truth. We want to try with our will to do the
good, and by doing good, to reach a deeper life, namely, eternal
life. These lines of thought have gone into Dei Verbum.

Also, in Lumen Gentium, the document on
the nature of the Church, there are many contributions by Joseph
Ratzinger. It is important that the Church is understood as a
Mysterium. It is in God’s saving plan that the Church is
founded. He calls from men those who believe in his words and
makes them one people; he forms them into the body of Christ,
Corpus Christi, and he makes us a Holy Assembly of Priests,
a temple of the Holy Spirit.

But even though Joseph Ratzinger proposed the
concept of Corpus Christi in Lumen Gentium as a
way to understand the Church, another concept, that of the
People of God, became very popular.

MÜLLER: He who has studied theology knows that
this concept of the People of God was not taken from sociology
or from politics, therefore to see in it the idea of a Church
under the rule of a worldly government is wrong...

In Christ, the Church is the sacrament, symbol
and instrument of the salvation of the world.

The Church is, in Christ, mediator of salvation
through the sacraments, through the preaching of the word of God,
through the pastoral care of the bishops.

In the Old and New Testaments, many images can
be found which show this relation of God to the faithful: the
flock and the shepherd, the vineyard and the wine-grower.

“People of God” appears mainly in the Old
Testament and presents the chosen people of God: Israel. Through
Jesus Christ, through the incarnation, there is an
intensification in the relation between God and His people. We
are taken into the relation of God to himself, into the
community of Father, Son and Spirit.

Already the Father of the Church, Cyprian of
Carthage, speaks in this sense about the Church as the “people
of God the Father”...

As the son of God, who became man, has made the
Church his body, the Church is not only a people with a vocation,
but she is the body of Christ. He is the head, we are the
members. He makes us a unity, we are taken into the human nature
of Christ. Therefore we have a share in his relation as a son to
his father, we are ourselves sons and daughters of God.

And the Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The temple is an image for the presence of God, which fills us
human beings. He is not present like he would be in a pagan
Temple, caught in one place, but “temple” means the whole Church
and in the center of this Church lives the Holy Spirit who
permeates all with the love of God.

Therefore it is important not to set in
opposition the concept of “People of God” to the concept “Body
of Christ” when interpreting the Council. The Church is the
People of God, unified by the triune God. She is the Body of
Christ. She is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

All are called to work together in the life of
the Church. God himself gives to the Church its shepherds and
preachers, bishops, priests, deacons, and he gives to the
baptized their charisma so that they can help to build up the
Church of God, the body of Christ, in love.

Therefore its is wrong to say that the Church
consists of individual groups and parties that fight and argue
against each other.

It is also wrong to think that the Church of
Rome is only one party amongst many others. This is a view of
the Church that has its place neither in the New Testament nor
in the ecclesial tradition, nor in the valid teaching of the
Church. This is no Catholic view of the Church, but an
anti-Catholic one which would destroy the Church, if one gives
in to it. In many countries we now have the problem of a
dwindling consciousness of the Church unified in Christ. Instead,
interviews are made against one another, and some irrelevant
opinions are uttered. When we as Catholic Christians fight
against each other, then only those groups who are against the
Church are happy about it.

In his book Jesus of Nazareth does
Benedict continue the line of thought begun in Dei Verbum?

MÜLLER: In theology and in spiritual life we
can learn to understand the traditional doctrines of the faith
better and discover new aspects in them. even the individual
Christian can reach a deeper understanding of the wealth of
revelation in the course of his life. Our human thought is
limited, we think in a discursive way, we get nearer to the
meaning of something step by step — or we don’t. We often remain
at a superficial understanding.

In Catholic teaching there is no “development”
in the sense that we get from one content to another content
that contradicts the original one. Dei Verbum also is an
ecclesiastical, man-made document of teaching and therefore it
can always be understood and explained in a more profound way.
But Dei Verbum formulates something absolutely basic for
the Catholic faith: scripture, tradition and the magisterium can
not be set in opposition. There is an inseparable connection
between the presence of God’s word in Holy Scripture, in the
Apostolic tradition and in the magisterium of the Church, which
is given to us by the succession of the bishops from the
Apostles.

In many statements about Joseph Ratzinger and
the Council, the idea is spread that he was more or less an
“enemy” of the Council. Is this true? Was he against Vatican II?

MÜLLER: This may be the opinion of somebody,
but it is entirely wrong. Something like that mostly comes from
extreme groups fighting against each other. Those are mostly
people who say that the Council is a break with the past – for
some this break is something positive, for others something
negative. Both sides are wrong, because it is not a question of
a break, but a proof of the continuity of the Church’s teaching.

I think that nobody knows the Council in its
history and teaching better than our Pope Benedict XVI. For
people who talk about a break it is not the Council that matters,
but their own personal interests. They want to make use of the
Council for ideological aims that are not compatible with the
Catholic faith.

The Pope is appointed by Christ. Like Peter he
is the rock, he was given the power of the keys, the authority
to bind and to loose. The Roman pope, the bishop of Rome, is the
everlasting principle and foundation of the visible unity of the
Church, also of the unity with Jesus Christ. Therefore it is a
contradiction to think that the Pope is standing against the
teaching of the Church as expressed in the Second Vatican
Council. I strongly refuse such opinions, because they are
nothing but propaganda — lies.

A fundamental theme of the Council was the
reform of Liturgy. As a young professor, Ratzinger wrote The
Spirit of the Liturgy and as Pope, in 2007, he promulgated
the motu proprio Summorum pontificum. Was this a reversal
of prior progress?

MÜLLER: In the Church we must not follow a
blind ideology of progress. It is of no importance to be
conservative or progressive according to any standard whatsoever.
Who sets the standard for this? What does it really mean? For
human thought and human reason it is important to stick to the
essential facts.

The evil ideologies of the 20th century also
regarded themselves as progressive and denigrated faith as
medieval. Today one realizes what disasters they have produced
on the level of morals and reason.

It is decisive to do the good and to perceive
the truth, and the truth is not dependent on the factor of time
but on the willingness of man to open himself to the word of God
and to accept the moral law that God has given us and to realize
it in one’s life.

There are misuses of liturgy, rendering it banal
and trivial. But the cause for this does not lie in the Second
Vatican Council but in a wrong theological concept. If I don’t
see Jesus as the son of God, who has become man, then liturgy is
but a collection of some rites and signs, and it only serves to
foster the sense of community of the people or their esthetical
sense, similar to a concert. Beautiful sounds and visual
impressions, which speak to the sentimental side of man, that we
once again are sitting together happily and are feeling well –
this is not the essence of liturgy!

Its essence is the presence of God in the
sacrament through the incarnation of the Son and the sending of
the Holy Spirit. It is only in this perspective that the
liturgical signs are filled with meaning, only in this way they
become signs, actions and rites of the Church that are in their
depth supported by divine life. The hymns and the music raise
our hearts up to God and the robes underline the importance of
what happens in the service.

Liturgy is no banal event, because its aim is
the glorification of God and the salvation of man. This
salvation is passed on to us in the sacraments, but in a similar
way also in other forms of worship, in the sacramentals, the
services of prayer, the way of the cross, processions,
pilgrimages. In the different forms of worship we can experience:
God is with us, God, Christus emanuel, God in our midst. We are
the people of God on pilgrimage, we know where we come from,
which is the way and where we go, for Christ says to us also
today: “I am the way” – which means the way that connects the
beginning and the destination.

In Summorum Pontificum the Holy Father
has permitted the form of the liturgy as it is found in the
Missale of Pope John XXIII as an extraordinary form, without
calling into question the ordinary form of the Mass. In the
history of liturgy there are alterations again and again, which
don’t, however, affect the substance of the Mass but bring
improvements. It is clear that the eucharist has also a
catechetical aspect, but that is not in the foreground. The
fundamental dimensions of the liturgy — adoration, praise,
glorification, preaching — have to be put into the right balance.
It is not good, when the priest preaches three sermons: a long
introduction, then he preaches and at the end says a lot of
things that have nothing to do with the Mass. This means making
the Mass banal and trivial. This is what the Holy Father wanted
to draw attention to.

From the extraordinary Form we can learn to
stand before God full of reverence – such aspects are to become
clearer again, also in the “Ritus Ordinarius.” The people
are to be sensitized that one doesn’t just walk round in the
church as if it was a museum, but that one genuflects before
Christ in the most holy sacrament; that we take the Holy Water
knowing this is holy ground on which we are standing. In a
church we can experience the presence of God our savior in a
special way. Here the Word of God that became flesh – Jesus
Christus himself – is truly, really and essentially present
among us.

Another fundamental issue at the Council was
ecumenical dialogue. Then, as Prefect, Ratzinger published the
Declaration Dominus Iesus…

MÜLLER: There are very many reactions, among
them also some not very inspired ones. The latter often were the
echo of some reports in the media, which were not able to cope
with the contents and aims of this document. It is hard to talk
about this with those who have not read the text of Dominus
Jesus. Beyond special theological problems, the document in
fact expresses what is the foundation of Catholic belief: There
is only one God in the three persons of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit; God, the Son, has taken on our human flesh, in his human
nature he has taken up all men and led them into the relation
with the threefold God. Through Christ we are sons and daughters
of God and may enjoy the friendship and love of God in the Holy
Spirit. Therefore also there is only one Church, only one Church
can exist. When we speak in the plural of different churches,
then we mean the one Church of God in Corinth, in Rome, in
Cracow – wherever. These are the different churches in which the
one Church of God is present, that appears in the communion
ecclesiarum. These different churches are not, however,
different denominations standing against each other, having a
different confession or a different basic understanding of what
really is the Church of God.

The separations in Christianity have brought
forth varying concepts of Church in the different communities.
Otherwise one would not have separated from one another.

From the Catholic point of view, the Church in
her visible form exists as a community of individual churches
which are led by legitimate bishops in unity with the successor
of St. Peter.

In such a context it is not impossible, that in
other Churches, in Orthodox churches, that essentially share our
fundamental understanding of the Church, and in ecclesiastical
communities of Protestant origin, that have a totally different
understanding of the Church, there are nevertheless essential
elements of the Church: baptism, Holy Scripture, belief in the
threefold God and many other basic elements of revelation –
elements that are focused, however, on the full communio
with the visible Catholic Church. Because non-Catholic
Christians have a different startingpoint, we cannot presume
that they share our view. From the Protestant point of view, the
aim is not the visible unity of the Church, as it is the case
for us Catholics.

Therefore it doesn’t make any sense at all to
think the text Dominus Iesus had hindered the ecumene.
On the contrary – it was only made clear what always had been
the Catholic point of view. It’s not the question of taking
something away from others or depriving them or pushing them
back. It’s simply the question of clearly naming the differences.

From the Catholic point of view this is
important: The ecumene and ecumenical theology have the
task to name these differences or contrasts and, where it is
possible, to diminish them or to overcome them, so that a
visible unity in the confession, the sacraments and the pastoral
work of the Church may be achieved. Dominus Iesus is an
honest description of facts. For theology and for everything we
do we can only take the facts as our startingpoint, not any
illusions.

The Council also addressed the question of
freedom of religion...

MÜLLER: According to the statements of
Dignitatis humanae it is clear: religious freedom means that
every person, because of natural law, decides in his conscience
what he accepts as truth; that he may also voice his religious
conviction, also in community with others and in public. The
state is not allowed to compel anybody to act against his
conscience.

Today it is a problem in some states that in the
name of freedom, self-determination and emancipation it is
thought that one can force the believers into actions that are
against their conscience. For instance it is said: By law we
make it a duty in a Christian hospital that also a Christian
doctor must perform an abortion. If this is not done, we
withdraw from this hospital the support of the state. This is
quite an obvious attack on religious freedom. This is a step
back into a totalitarian way of thinking. For no state has the
right to compel anybody against his conscience to do something
what he thinks is evil, bad and sinful.

The Liberals of the 19th century understood
something different by religious freedom, namely that somebody
has the freedom in relation to God to construct his own religion.
This the Church has always refused up till today, for we are
obliged to answer to God in our conscience. Therefore this –
wrongly so called – religious freedom cannot be accepted. It is
obvious that, if God exists, man is obliged to him in his
conscience. What I said before about religious freedom refers to
the religious freedom in relation to other people. We must not
force others to act against their conscience. In relation to God,
however, religious freedom is the fact that we are free and
uncompelled to obey the word of God.

Did the Pope offer you some advice on being
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?

MÜLLER: No, he didn’t say anything. The Holy
Father doesn’t interpret or correct his collaborators in this
way. We are all quite free. In this respect I think that we
simply should follow Pope Benedict’s line of thought.